A Systematic Review of Social Networking Research in Information Systems

Social networking applications such as blogs, instant messaging, podcasts, social networking websites (e.g., Renren in China, Vkontakte in Russia, Facebook), professional networking websites (e.g., LinkedIn), Twitter, and virtual worlds (e.g., Second Life) have become increasingly popular in the last few years. Because these applications have substantial implications for users, organizations, and society, online social networks (OSN) have gained attention from information systems (IS) researchers and grown steadily as a research area since 2004. However, to organize the accumulated research and encourage researchers to examine new and pressing issues in social networks, available knowledge needs to be synthesized and research gaps need to be addressed [Bandara et al., 2011]. Therefore, we conducted a systematic review of publications about OSN published in major IS journals between January 2004 and August 2013 and provide an overview of the state of IS research regarding OSN. The objective of this study is to show the evolution of the existing IS research on OSN, to build a common nomenclature and taxonomy for this area of research, to identify theories used, and to provide a useful roadmap for future research in this area